China’s Digitalization of Public Diplomacy - Navigating Panda and Wolf Warrior Styles

This book investigates the digital transformation of public diplomacy of China, focusing on how the Chinese government has adapted and redefined this practice within its own political and ideological framework. Drawing on communicative constructivism, it conceptualizes the digitalization of public diplomacy as an organized process of meaning construction through which political identities, international norms, and discourse power are produced and contested. The analysis traces historical continuities from propaganda, people-to-people diplomacy, and symbolic solidarity to contemporary forms of platformized communication based on strategic narratives shaped by China’s party-state institutions. Empirical case studies address panda diplomacy, COVID-19 communication in Africa, narratives surrounding the Russia–Ukraine war, and diaspora engagement through WeChat. The book argues that this system follows a realist-constructivist logic, combining regime security and geopolitical interests with efforts to reorganize discursive environments and build a communication order aligned with the ideological priorities of the Communist Party of China. This timely study will interest scholars and graduate students of international relations and communication science, public diplomacy studies, international/intercultural communication, and critical communication studies, as well as political science, organizational communication, and social theory.